The Theater: Uncle Vanya Unwinds

NICOL WILLIAMSON’S LATE SHOW

The notion that fun and literacy can coexist is a proposition that U.S. theater audiences generally seem to view with unveiled skepticism. Many Americans regard a cultural evening as a therapeutic penance roughly comparable to a dose of cod-liver oil. All such gentry will be dazzled, enlightened and elated by Nicol Williamson’s Late Show. Williamson looks like a kind of carbonated El Greco. He has a taut elongated body and funereal brows—yet an effervescent mirth, irony, mischief and intelligence emanate from every tone and gesture of this remarkable actor. In a limited engagement, after each evening’s Broadway performance in Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya, he unwinds in poetry and song off-Broadway.

And what an unwinding! Pop, rock, talk and sock, as Variety might put it.

From T.S. Eliot and Samuel Beckett to Dorothy Parker and E.B. White, from I Can’t Give You Anything But Love, Baby—with some jazzy pianistics as a bonus—to Me and Bobbie McGee. This number, rendered in Williamson’s supple and sensitive baritone, is affecting enough to supply an added paragraph to the vocabulary of soul.

His poetry readings contain a profound resonance and make imagery tactile.

One could rave on and on about the rare delights of this highly unusual show; and one rave at least should go to English Bassist Ray Cane and his fluent onstage combo that keeps the Eastside Playhouse in the earthquake zone. *T.E. Kalem